Save your local! Should volunteers help keep our public libraries open?

Public libraries | UK | Volunteers

Alison Flood  | Tuesday 8 August 2017

Kensal Rise Library in London, where volunteers have set up a community library. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian 

 

 

 

Readers checking a book out of the village library might not immediately notice much of a difference, but Congresbury is the latest public library to haven been handed over “to the community”. You may be used to libraries being run by volunteers – maybe your local is – but this structure is relatively new. Over the last decade, as many libraries began closing across the UK due to swingeing cuts to local authority funding by central government – 121 libraries closed last year alone – some have instead been handed over by councils to the community to run.

Since librarian Ian Anstice began charting the cuts to UK libraries on his campaigning website Public Libraries News in 2010, 500 of the UK’s 3,850 remaining libraries have now been taken over, at least in part, by volunteers. “I’ve been looking at the count going up steadily for the last few years,” says Anstice. “In 2010, there were a handful – perhaps 10 in the whole country. So this is quite a staggering change.”  Read more:

The loss of libraries is another surefire way to entrench inequality Mary O'Hara Mary O'Hara

 ‘Having a library within walking distance of home was a way for a young girl from a poor background to access the same breadth of reading material as anyone else.’ Photograph: Getty Images

As someone who grew up in a home without books, no spare cash to buy them and no tradition of reading bedtime stories, my local library offered something unique and indispensable. It’s hard to think of anything that brought me more joy as a primary school-aged child than walking back from the Falls Road library in west Belfast with a bundle of books.

Save Our Libraries: Readers' reports

 

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Having a library within walking distance of home was a way for a young girl from a poor background to access the same breadth of reading material as anyone else – at no expense. It stripped away at least some of the disadvantage that came with being from a low-income family. So every time I hear of another library closure – and there were more than 100 last year alone in Scotland, Wales and England, according to official figures – it hits a nerve. The loss of libraries is simply another surefire way to entrench inequality.

From providing books for people of all ages and backgrounds, to kids clubs and hubs for older people, to computer terminals that those with no access to the internet can use to find job vacancies, libraries are about as democratic and diverse as is possible to imagine. When properly funded and resourced they are educational and social anchors in communities everywhere. Yet, despite knowing all this, in the past five years the relentless funding constraints placed on local authorities have seen library budgets slashed by an astounding amount.  Read more...

Libraries in Times of Crisis By George Eberhart | August 20, 2015

Julia Brungs, IFLA policy and projects officer.

 

 

The IFLA Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) held a panel discussion Tuesday, August 18, at the World Library and Information Congress in Cape Town on “The Role of Library and Information Workers in a Time of Crisis.”

Simon Edwards, director of professional services for CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the UK, said the scope of potential crises that librarians face worldwide is vast, ranging from personal crises to community, national, and global crises that threaten the entire species. “Government agencies also classify crises as sudden (with an immediate impact) and smoldering (a long-term crisis of attrition),” he said. “Libraries play subtly different roles in supporting communities in each.”

Read more: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/libraries-in-times-of-crisis/

CILIP | Save Our Libraries Day Saturday 5th February 2011

CILIP | Save Our Libraries Day